Thursday, December 25, 2008

MTV Orders More Reality Shows, Avoids Music

Photo: Gries/Getty

MTV has heard your calls to put the Music back into Music Television, and it now has your answer: 16 new reality shows that have nothing to do with music. With the death of TRL, FNMTV remains the last vestige of original music programming on the station. The new crop of non-music shows shifts into a category MTV lovingly calls “aspirational, enterprising and empowering.” For instance: a student-shot series filmed at the University of Wisconsin called College Life, a daredevil program called Nitro Circus, the Donald Trump-produced Charm School-esque Girls of Hedsor Hall and a show about the founders of Collegehumor.com, ingeniously titled The College Humor Show.

“These new series reflect Generation ‘Why Not?’ — living, working and playing on their own terms, ‘adventure capitalists’ if you will, pursuing a variety of thrill-seeking, 2.0, express-yourself enterprises,” says MTV entertainment president Brian Graden. Everyone from Justin Timberlake to Kanye West have made public pleas for MTV to return to their music video ways, but the recent schedule announcements show those cries have landed on deaf ears. Should MTV even be allowed to put on the Video Music Awards anymore? It seems kind of superfluous, like if ESPN handed out Academy Awards.

Of the new reality shows announced, only Daddy’s Girls has anything to do with music, and that’s only because it stars the daughters of Run-DMC’s Reverend Run. Thankfully, MTV has outsourced all its music videos to their video site MTV Music, but that doesn’t mean we forgive them for making the world suffer through the upcoming Bromance.